Phosphene
Productivity
desktop customization
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
16 positive, 15 neutral or asking, 2 mixed, 2 critical, out of 35 comments about the project. Thread score +0.45.
Idea: 6 for, 0 againstDesign: 1 for, 2 againstExecution: 3 for, 0 againstDocs: 2 for, 0 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Impressive reverse engineering and polished work
From 4 comments
Wow, thank you for this. I've been working on a screensaver suite but LegacyScreenSaver is so janky. I was hoping someone would figure out apple's private wallpaper framework and…
postalcoder on HNReally nice work. We went down a similar rabbit hole recently and reverse engineered the Aerials catalogue to figure out how Apple wires this stuff up, so seeing another open…
tharropoulos on HNHey, I was an engineer on the macOS and Xcode teams and just wanted to complement you on your project. I like your solution to occlusion. I’m developing a proof-of-concept using…
LatencyKills on HNOne of the first things I removed from my Mac was the 45 gb (sic) worth of wallpaper videos.
frr149 on HN
Useful for custom video wallpapers
From 2 comments
So cool! This reminds me I wanted to try setting a custom video background with some footage i had. Didn’t even realize it wasn’t natively supported till i saw this!
wanoir on HNWoah, thank you! Just checking these will keep on working on the lock screen and as screen savers too?
manuisin on HN
Objections
Wallpaper videos can cause heavy data use and disk space
From 2 comments
These damned wallpapers gave me my worst experience with Apple. MacOS would delete them and redownload automatically over and over again, using almost a terrabyte of data per…
markdown on HNOne of the first things I removed from my Mac was the 45 gb (sic) worth of wallpaper videos.
frr149 on HN
Video wallpapers distract while working
From 1 comment
Good on ya. I won't use it, myself, because I can't deal with wallpaper moving behind my work (I also can't listen to music, while I work. Maybe it's a "generational" thing).…
ChrisMarshallNY on HN
Requests
A demo in the README
From 1 comment
Nice work but would love to see a demo in readme
mujib77 on HN
Make the landing page or title clearer
From 1 comment
Very neat. I was confused at first, I was like you can download the video screensavers.. why scrape the frames. Then I saw your comment and read I can use my own videos for…
encore2097 on HN
Questions
Does it keep playing on the lock screen and as screen saver?
From 2 comments
Woah, thank you! Just checking these will keep on working on the lock screen and as screen savers too?
manuisin on HNVery nice, thank you for this! I’ve been wishing for a way to control when the wallpaper freezes. Can your app also keep it playing on the lock screen?
solarkraft on HN
Alternatives named
Apple Aerials
From 2 comments
Really nice work. We went down a similar rabbit hole recently and reverse engineered the Aerials catalogue to figure out how Apple wires this stuff up, so seeing another open…
tharropoulos on HNThese damned wallpapers gave me my worst experience with Apple. MacOS would delete them and redownload automatically over and over again, using almost a terrabyte of data per…
markdown on HN
LegacyScreenSaver
From 1 comment
Wow, thank you for this. I've been working on a screensaver suite but LegacyScreenSaver is so janky. I was hoping someone would figure out apple's private wallpaper framework and…
postalcoder on HN